Intel Announces New Server Hardware

At the SC11 supercomputing conference in Seattle, Intel unveiled an array of new server hardware (well, the codenames anyway) designed to work with the also new Intel Xeon Processor E5 (Sandy Bridge-EP). The hardware lineup is designed to meet the growing and increasingly diverse needs of supporting embedded applications. More details will be coming in the first part of next year, but there’s enough information available to get potential customers--everyone from small businesses to larger enterprises--excited.

The various new boards offer single- and dual CPU sockets and are optimized for, in turn, HPC, high-density environments, heavy-duty I/O requirements, and massive memory needs. On the chassis side, the new offerings include those for (not surprisingly) HPC and high-density needs in multiple form factors, including the pedestal, 4U Intel Server System P4000 (Union Peak) family.

Earlier this year, Intel’s Enterprise Platform and Services Division pledged to dramatically improve the breadth and depth of server products available to channel partners and end customers.

Tuesday night, during an event at the SC ’11 supercomputing conference in Seattle, Intel delivered on that promise by disclosing plans to release a comprehensive family of new server boards and systems built on the future generation Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 (Codenamed Sandy Bridge-EP). The disclosure covered eight motherboards and three new chassis systems. Specific details of the server board products, including specifications, naming and pricing, will be provided closer to product launch in the first half of 2012.

This expanded product portfolio offers a diverse lineup of server boards and system solutions to meet almost any customer need, from small businesses hoping to expand to enterprise organizations performing the most complex, compute intensive of tasks.

All of these offerings are being delivered based on customer demand for more differentiated offerings to support the ever increasing variety of embedded applications. Intel channel partners will be able to meet this growing demand with a powerful array of solutions that can be customized for specific customer requirements.
Here is an overview of the new hardware lineup (with code names) on the map for 2012:

Jefferson Pass: A half-width, high performance 2-socket motherboard for HPC and High Density environments.Washington Pass: A density and performance optimized 2-socket half-width motherboard with a large memory footprint.Copper Pass: A full-width 2-socket board supporting maximum I/0 and expandability Canoe Pass: A mainstream full-width 2-socket board for a broad range of computing applications. Iron Pass: A high end board designed to support maximum I/O capability in a full-width, 2-socket design. Grizzly Pass: (16 DIMM and 24 DIMM) A premium computing board supporting massive I/O and memory capacity. Intel Server System H2000 Family: Flexible, high density chassis designed for high performance computing installations. Crown Pass: An Expert Workstation supporting the fastest CPU and I/O technologies. Intel Server System Family (codenamed Bobcat Peak) – Flexible, high density chassis designed for high performance computing installations Intel Server System P4000 Family (codenamed Union Peak) – A pedestal chassis with a new look and feel in a highly configurable 4U form factor. Intel Server System R2000 Family (codenamed Bighorn peak) – A flexible, configurable, high density Chassis for Enterprise deployments.

Intel will bring additional products to market in 2012 to support the future Intel® Xeon Processor E5. Details on these additional products will be available in future posts.